Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

Gonçalo Pereira Miguel is 24 years old and the first person in three generations of his family to return to their 700-hectare Montado farm in Portugal’s Alentejo. The farm had been degraded by decades of continuous grazing, treated as an inheritance rather than a business. In 2023, a severe drought made the damage impossible to ignore.
Two years after introducing 85 cows and a precision rotational grazing system, the results are striking: hay costs that once consumed half of a farm’s operating budget are nearly gone, calf mortality is zero, and species that had never been seen on the property — from perennial grasses to moles — are returning.
We recorded this conversation walking among the cattle on the farm, watching a paddock move happen in real time. We talk about the economics of the Montado, the surprising ease of managing cattle in a rotational system even as a first-generation farmer, the genetics of the Maronesa breed, and Gonçalo's dream: to eventually remove all fences between neighbouring farms and graze 8,500 hectares as a single regional herd.
This episode is part of the Role of Animals in food and agriculture systems of the future series, supported and co-produced by the Datamars Sustainability Foundation.

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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
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Peter Herz spent his career as a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley deep tech: chips, semiconductors, data storage. Then a doctor's visit in 2010 changed everything. Today he is co-founder and general partner of 1st Course Capital, one of the best-performing food funds you've probably never heard of.
So what does a former chip designer invest in? Alt proteins, vertical farms, AI farm software? Not quite. The portfolio is half tech, half food brands, with no engineered foods. And the better-for-you food brands are outperforming the tech by a mile. So why is it still so hard to raise money for food while investors chase the next big shiny thing in AI?
In this episode, we talk about why engineering tools don’t always work on biology, what Peter learned from firing his doctor, why he’s sceptical of lab-grown meat, and how better food brands could be meeting a demand the market has underestimated.
Episode and shownotes on our website.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
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Four or five eggs, swimming in butter. For breakfast!
That is how Dr. John Schoonbee eats. A trained doctor and Global Chief Medical Officer at Swiss Re (a $43 billion reinsurance giant), John studied medicine in South Africa and worked as a GP before following his love of maths into reinsurance. His job is to spot the health trends that shape how long people live; and for the past decade, one trend in particular has caught his attention: nutrition.
It’s a breakfast that goes against almost everything many of us have been taught about healthy eating. But John’s blood work is perfect, and he argues that our fear of fat may be one of the great misconceptions of modern nutrition — what he calls “probably the most successful brainwashing exercise ever.” Meanwhile, 53% of US adults are diabetic or pre-diabetic. John’s case is that type 2 diabetes, long taught as chronic and progressive, can be put into remission through more nutrient-dense food, fewer carbohydrates and more fat. And because healthier policyholders live longer, a reinsurer has a very concrete reason to care.
In this episode, we get into the fear of fat, why diets fail, and what John has learned from the evidence around low-carb, higher-fat diets. He shares how Swiss Re is piloting nutrition programmes with US life insurers, and why he believes we may have misunderstood some of the fundamentals of nutrition.
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Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
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Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
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What if the best argument for regenerative agriculture isn't the planet, but the profit? Francisco Roque de Pinho didn't set out to become a regenerative farmer. He came from capital markets, carbon trading, and strategic consulting — and stumbled into farmland management when distressed clients needed someone to rescue underperforming assets in Uruguay. What he found, through trial and careful observation, was that precision grazing — intensive rotational cattle management on short cycles — delivered superior financial results from day one. No yield dip. No transition cost. Just 30-40% more cattle per hectare, lower veterinary costs, lower labour costs, and dramatically improved pastures.
The Land Group, which Francisco co-founded in January 2016, now operates 20,000 hectares across seven farms in Uruguay and is expanding into Portugal and Spain — drawn by the neglected potential of the ancient Montado landscape, and by a growing wave of European investors looking for stable assets far from geopolitical risk.
But they never say "regenerative" to investors.
In this conversation, recorded on a walk through Lisbon, Francisco explains why the word triggers the wrong assumptions, what language actually raises capital, and what a $1 billion precision-grazing strategy would look like across Uruguay and Iberia.
Topics covered:
— How The Land Group started: from distressed debt to "cocktail investments" in farmland
— The financial case for precision grazing: 30-40% yield uplift, lower costs, from day one
— Why "regenerative" closes institutional investment doors — and what language opens them
— The Montado system: why Portugal's ancient cork oak landscape needs cattle back, urgently
— Carbon credits: why Francisco excludes them entirely from financial models
— The $1 billion barbell strategy: Uruguay + Iberia, and a global grassfed beef brand
— Why biogenic methane from well-managed herds is categorically different from fossil fuel emissions
— The "regenerative alpha": when soil health will be priced into land values.

More about this episode.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
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Jacob Israelow is the founder of Dirt Capital Partners, an investment platform that partners with regenerative farmers and ranchers to help them secure long-term access to the land they farm—and ultimately own it. He left Goldman Sachs and returned to the New York area in 2012, bringing a background in real estate and investing and a growing interest in local food systems. After spending about a year talking to hundreds of farmers, land trusts and others across the Northeast, he built Dirt Capital around a simple question: could investment capital help good farmers become landowners without taking value away from them?

The mechanic at the heart of Dirt Capital is a lease-purchase model. The fund buys a piece of farmland alongside one specific farmer or rancher, signs a ten-year lease with a purchase option locked in at a pre-agreed price at year five and again at year ten, and lets that farmer buy the land back once their business, and their balance sheet, have caught up. It is a way to get farmers onto land conventional lenders will not yet finance, without turning them into permanent tenants.
In this episode, Koen and Jacob dig into what sits underneath that model: how Dirt Capital manages real estate risk while leaving the farm business risk to the farmer, why regenerative practices do not automatically make land worth more, what happens when a purchase does not go to plan, and how a firm that has put roughly $80 million to work over the past decade is about to try to raise $100 million for its next fund.

More about this episode.

Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Support the show
=======
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
Join Gumroad
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.
Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!